Chapter 17
Natalia
In the end, Bianca doesn’t hold the press conference she’d announced to me on the phone.
She’s written a long post, thought-out, though a little raw, and posted it on one of those sites where players put up their own stuff, no reporters in front of her and no questions to cut her off halfway or try to trip her up.
I guess she preferred her words whole, and I get it, because Bianca has had people try to hurt her too many times in this life.
She tells how someone stole intimate photos of her with her girlfriend and used them to threaten her, how at that club everyone knew and nobody lifted a finger to help her, and how I defended her the only way I could think of and ended up paying for it dearly.
I read my name in the piece and a knot forms in my stomach, because I asked her not to do it. I asked her more than once, to wait.
Holland appears barefoot, with a glass of water, and by the look on my face, she realizes something’s wrong.
“Bianca published the whole story,” I announce with a huff.
She leans on the counter next to me and reads part of the article over my shoulder.
“I told her not to do it,” I murmur.
“Maybe she needed to do it for herself, to take control of her life,” she adds, stroking my back.
I don’t answer. I keep staring at the screen, thinking about all the times I told Bianca I’d handle it.
About the witness I hunted down on my own.
About Hale, who I went to find by myself outside a restaurant.
For months I was sure I was protecting her, just like at the old club, when I decided without asking that looking after her was my job.
But Bianca isn’t twenty anymore, and I kept treating her like a kid who has to be protected so nobody hurts her.
In reality, I was leaving her out of her own story, which is the one thing that truly belongs to her.
***
The next two days are bad, the kind where all you want is for night to come so they’ll finally be over.
Some people ask why Bianca’s speaking now and not months ago, others hint she’s after money or publicity. There are even some who defend Hale like their life depends on it.
It’s something I know by heart, because I’ve spent the whole season being the example of how a four-second video can tell a story that isn’t the real one.
But on the third day things start to change.
The woman who ran press for the other team, the one Paula told me was reliable, confirms in writing that the club knew about the photos and didn’t help Bianca.
Two more women turn up with their own stories about Hale and brand him a real predator, far worse than just a bad person.
And, little by little, the scale tips toward Bianca’s side. It isn’t clean or fast, but it tips.
My grandmother used to say the truth is like oil, no matter how much water you pour on top, sooner or later it floats back up.
In the end, Hale gets fired from the outlet he wrote for, and in the industry every door closes on him. The players’ protection committee has opened an investigation, because stolen photos have a very ugly name in the criminal code and tend to bring lawyers along.
In front of the cameras, I confirm that everything Bianca Loureiro says is true, that I saw it with my own eyes.
I make clear I’m not going to apologize for the shove, that I can apologize for plenty of things in my life, but not for that one.
That one I’d do a million times over, whatever the consequences.
I explain that I’ve already handed all the material I had on Hale to the committee so they can attach it to the legal action.
Finally, I announce that my next contract with the brand that’s sponsored me since I was eighteen will go entirely to the Bianca Loureiro Foundation, which helps girls without resources in the Belo Horizonte area.
I leave it there, without answering questions, because all I want is to turn the page as soon as possible.
***
Hades calls me to her office the next day. It’s just as cold as the first time, and she’s set her glasses on the desk with the arms pointed at me.
“Now that things have finally cleared up, it’s time I told you the truth,” she says the second I sit down across from her.
“The truth about what?”
“Your old coach is a good friend,” she says without beating around the bush. “She knew I liked the way you play and she called me the second she found out they wanted to trade you. We had a player who wanted to leave, so the deal practically did itself.”
It takes me a moment to understand what she’s talking about.
“We wanted to give you a place where you’d feel comfortable and wouldn’t have to keep explaining the shove over and over.
The clause coaching the girls’ team is no punishment, Natalia,” she adds.
“It’s good for you, the fans see you in a better light now, especially given that Iris was in the same program last year. ”
“Thanks, I guess,” I murmur, with a shrug.
Hades goes back to her diagrams, like the conversation has already stolen too much of her time.
“Don’t thank me. Just keep scoring goals,” she reminds me as I get up.
I leave the office with a strange feeling, turning every word over.
Ever since I got to this club I’ve carried that clause like a sentence, something to clean up an image I’d broken with my own hands, shove by shove.
I was sure it was a corrective, an elegant way to remind me what I’d done.
And it turns out it was a hand held out to me that I didn’t know how to see.
And, as a side effect of all of it, I met Holland.
What weighs on me now is that in a drawer in my Capitol Hill apartment there’s a three-year contract in another country. A European club offering me an opportunity that’s hard to turn down, and I still haven’t told Holland. I guess keeping things to myself is what I’ve always been best at.